Ratings & Reviews

I occasionally drink the decaffeinated version of this tea because it still tastes a bit like green tea. It turns out that that's exactly how the caffeinated version tastes—a bit like green tea. There's some vegetal freshness and a little grassy bitterness on the back of the tongue, but that's pretty much it. If you like the taste of green tea, Bigelow isn't really for you.

UPDATE: On a hunch, I thought I'd try brewing it with hotter water to see if Bigelow blended their green tea to be brewed like black tea. Nope. Still no flavor.

Several bags of this tea have been sitting around my pantry for up to a year after bringing them home from a professional conference, occasionally consumed either alone or teamed with a bag of peppermint. Finally I'm thinking to rate it!

Where I grew up, a troublesome percentage of fellow youth sniffed glue, paint and even crack. Instead I sniff tea bags. It's less harmful. This tea, in dry form, offered a sweet, mild, pleasantly vegetal odor, like celery. The poured tea and wet bag, by contrast, smelled a bit smoky. That's hard to explain. Yet the taste was like the dry aroma—mild, not strong enough for my preferences even after steeping many minutes, but smooth and pleasant, and somewhat like celery or (since I sweeten my tea) rhubarb. I've certainly found worse conference/office teas! For a mass-produced, bagged green tea, it ain't half bad.

I feel a little bad rating this so low because it's not that bad a tea--but there are so many better options out there that I feel like I can't find any justification for rating it higher. This tea has little scent and barely any flavor, and it doesn't even have enough of a kick to justify drinking it purely for the caffeine.

Not that I'd choose Lipton either--I prefer ITO-EN or Yamamotoyama or Takaokaya or Twinings or even the mysterious tins of cheap loose leaf that I get from the grocery store, labeled only in Chinese, which never run out. Anything.

And to be fair this is definitely better than nothing, but Bigelow has much better offerings than this. They seem to do well with those sweet herbal teas that I think of as the "serve to people who hate tea" teas, and if you want to try something caffeinated their green tea with pomegranate blend is also quite sweet. And, hey, if you're a person who hates the taste of green tea and yet still maintain some sort of masochistic commitment to drinking it, this might be just the tea for you!

Meh. Typical green-tasting grassy green conveniently bagged, easily acquirable tea. Not a holy grail by any means - but I'll take this over a cuppa Lipton any day! And, yes, I had this in an old law firm I worked at years back. (Office tea!) And at cheap delis in Philly and NYC.
Oh - and now in 2014 we have this & Lemon lift on hand in the office.

It's funny, the other reviewers comment on how they've had this one in office buildings, and I also have memories of drinking it in an office too.

Recognizable as a Chinese tea (some brands, like Twinings, use Japanese tea or at least a Japanese style of tea for their basic green tea), but otherwise somewhat generic. Golden amber in color, not very vegetal or grassy, and rather flat tasting. Flavor is somewhat muted: I think I prefer green teas that are both sharper and more aromatic.

To my tastes, Bigelow offers some much better flavored teas and herbal blends. And in this price range, Ten Ren and Foojoy both offer Chinese green teas I strongly prefer to this one.

That said, I still find this tea drinkable, and there are a lot of green teas in tea bags that I find much worse--and completely unpalatable. So Bigelow does have something going with this one!